Mom of Gay Mormon Teen Pushes Church to Accept Homosexuality

Are Mormons beginning to ease off of the anti-gay rhetoric? Their stance on homosexuality has certainly softened in recent years. It was only 2008 when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints famously (or infamously, depending on whom you ask) spent millions campaigning for California’s Proposition 8, which defined marriage as between one man and one woman.

Wendy and Tom Montgomery were one of the thousands of LDS couples that walked door-to-door to campaign for Prop 8 at their church’s behest. But their opinion on homosexuality changed last year, when they learned that their 15-year-old son is gay.

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Now Sister Montgomery is leading the charge in pushing the church to stop teaching that homosexuality is a sin.

Wowza. That could be quite the change-up for the Latter-day Saints, but is it an impossible task? I say no. They’ve already gone a long way in shifting their thinking about being gay. They no longer teach that being gay is a sin, only acting upon it is.

I know, I know, it sounds trifling, and really, do they expect their gay members to live a life of celibacy? Well at least there’s support for these individuals that chose to live such a life. There’s even an LGBT club at BYU!

Could this really be the beginning of LDS acceptance of gays?

It’s hard to imagine such a thing happening when kids like Jordan Montgomery are considering suicide over the “sin” of being gay, and his parents are kicked out of leadership positions in their ward for accepting and loving him as he is, but don’t write the idea off just yet.

It could be a long time coming, but it looks like the church might be laying the foundation for the eventual acceptance of openly gay members. Mormon theology practices something called "continuing revelation," which basically means that the head of the church (called the prophet or the president) communes with God to learn how the church should progress here on Earth.

In 1890, the prophet received revelation that polygamy should no longer be practiced, so it’s not too far-fetched to consider the possibility of a new revelation at some point in the future that would change the church’s stance on homosexuality.

Your guess is as good as mine as to if they’ll allow polygamy again.

Do you think the Mormon Church will ever completely accept the gay community?